NEW ZEALAND – Feeling disconnected from the outside world while working from home full-time, New Zealander Herman Jagpal set out to rebuild the human connection he felt was missing from his life by challenging himself to “365 days of rejection” in 2025.
Approaching strangers with requests that might normally receive a “no” every day of the year, such as asking to play football in someone’s backyard or to cook his own steak at a restaurant, he posted his efforts online.
“I thought if I did this challenge, it would force me to meet someone new every single day, and either it could be a really embarrassing moment, or it could be a really wholesome moment,” the 28-year-old told Kyodo News in a recent interview in Hamilton, New Zealand.
What began as a side project ended up garnering a million followers in nine months and led to a realisation that simply asking for what you want is “kind of like a superpower”.
“I realised that you can kind of get anything you want in life if you just ask,” said Jagpal, who added that even the nos can lead to kindness.
“There’s been a lot of times where I ask people and they’ll say no, but they’ll say, oh, maybe you should go and ask this person, he might be able to help you with this, or they might be able to help you with that.”
While approaching strangers with just simple asks was nerve-racking at first, Jagpal said he quickly realised that getting rejected was not a big deal, and most people are too focused on their own lives to judge him.
“It’s really just scary in my head, but after they say no, you’re like, oh, okay, cool. It is what it is… and you go on with your day.”
But as the year went on, he was surprised by how many strangers were willing to say yes to his requests. He found he received more yeses than nos as he became more comfortable asking and “standing in the awkwardness” while waiting for an answer, rather than quickly back-pedalling.
However, his posts on social media were filled with comments that he was finding such success only because he was in New Zealand, a small country known for its friendly people.
This led Jagpal to travel to 30 countries, including China, Egypt, Finland and Mexico, as he sought to prove that kindness is everywhere.
“I think a lot of the time, we have these perceptions of places and how people live and how people are, that we start to forget that at the core of it, we’re all human,” said Jagpal.
“No matter where you go, you can find people that will open up and want to engage and want to connect.”
The challenge proved successful, with the young Kiwi able to find someone to say yes to his requests within an hour at every stop on his itinerary.
For Jagpal, the experience reinforced the idea that “there’s more good in the world than bad”, despite the gloomy headlines that often dominate global news cycles. “You just have to kind of go out there and put yourself in a position to receive it,” he added.
With this mantra in mind, he has taken on a new challenge, aiming to trade up from a paperclip to a house, emulating the famous story of Canadian blogger Kyle MacDonald, who reportedly did the same over the course of a year in the early 2000s.
Since beginning in August 2025, he has traded up to a collection of items worth an estimated NZ$83,000 (S$62,000), including a bespoke jewellery voucher, a shirt signed by Argentine football legend Diego Maradona, and Pokemon cards.
While he acknowledges that the challenge could take years, Jagpal has committed to seeing it through, having faith it is just a matter of finding the right person for the trade.
And while he completed the 365-day rejection challenge at the end of 2025, Jagpal has continued to integrate the spontaneous asks into his day-to-day life, saying it is now just a part of how he wants to live. KYODO NEWS
